The project will examine economic determinants of the distribution of population in metropolitan areas in order to test several important hypotheses concerning population movement and to predict the effects of a number of population policies currently being implemented or considered. In particular, central city-suburb population movement and various policies aimed at altering it will be examined. The analysis begins with an examination of the behavior of an individual household. In choosing a residential location, households are forced to reveal their preferences for attributes of the package of housing services, including local public services, neighborhood environmental factors, and accessibility to employment and other activities, by the spatial nature of the choice involved. This project will thus take advantage of the spatial dimension of the metropolitan economy to provide an economic test of which of these factors are considered important by households in choosing a residential location. The data are primarily drawn from a survey of 29,000 households in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have been supplemented by data on local government services and neighborhood environmental conditions. The estimation method is multiple regression analysis, with rental values of individual dwelling units regressed on the set of hypothesized determinants of rental value, including the above-mentioned factors. Implicit prices of "units" of the factors under consideration will be obtained and used to test hypotheses concerning population movement. These prices will then be used in estimating demand functions for the above-mentioned economic determinants, which will allow us to relate certain behavioral observations to relevant prices and to specific household characteristics. The empirical results will have numerous uses, including prediction of population movement stemming from urban renewal plans, changes in school financing, and alterations in metropolitan transportation networks.